Postings of an inane pre-culture

Posted by Arctonym on October 10, 2012 01:18 pm 4

Once upon a time, memes used to be a sign of condescension. A passing witticism for when you couldn't even be bothered to reply to someone, and decided to use a staple. Now that internet memes are popular culture, I'm starting to lose track of their significance.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is, it seems people are using memes in place of "First!" and lyrical referencing. Have people become unoriginal to the point where they need to use someone else's words in every given instance? Moreover, what do memes even resemble even more? People genuinely believe they're funny when they use a rehashed joke, even though they gladly tear down a movie for using the same joke as another. Is this because they believe that they're at the forefront of popular humor, or simply because memes have a resonance potential with the target audience? If the latter is the case, then even more questions need to be posed.

In many ways .GIFs are the counter-culture to the mass-consumed staples of internet memes. But does that make them intrinsically better? Do .GIFs need structure, so that the more striking among them can stand out more, or are they forever doomed to be the equivalent of articles to a compendium? Does the platform (size and browser qualities) automatically limit what can be done with medium? Will .GIFs plateau once they hit the "puzzle piecing" phase - I honestly can't see a higher form of image modification done with .GIFs than that? Moreover, they need to have direction. As a medium that changes frames frequently, does it doom itself to mediocrity given that becoming too long puts it in an inefficient short story category, or does being too short constitute an advantage in their consumption alone?

In any of these cases, should .GIFs become too broad, they risk becoming meaningless, the digital revolution's answer to the 90's craze of home videos, destined to be shared among friends and family due to ubiquity breeding mediocrity and indifference. Should .GIFs stay as a sub-culture (near impossible, today), will we ever truly see how high the medium/format can be taken in terms of sharing/efficient portrayals/progression into a true art form?

These are just some of the questions that continuously puzzle me about internet posting. Are we ahead of the curve, and thus carry the responsibility of shaping the community to accommodate much better creators, or are we forevermore a cult self-absorbed in its own anti-humor and irony?